YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Kaplan

lines on the record
326
first
2026-03-11
most recent
2026-03-11
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Well, they know how to do it. I mean, if they're doing it, they know how to do it. It's more to video game developers in general. Own the craft, own our art form, stop giving it to these fucking corporate jackholes. You are the golden goose.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Small studios are the future of gaming. The big studios basically acquire the small studios for new IP and ideas in the small studios grow in the really compelling new innovative ideas are going to come out of small studios”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, I think so. Like AI to me right now currently, it's like an interesting fever dream, you know? At the point I'm at with it.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Wasn't going to hire an intern to do it. I was just going to work an hour later, two hours later that night to do it. It made my life easier. It didn't take a job. That seems okay. As long as that ethical line stays in place, what I don't worry about is no matter how good AI gets, never going to draw a picture like Arnold saying. It's never going to tell a story like Chris Metzen, you know, the human spirit is irreplaceable.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “You know, voice actors and artists, it can't be lifting from them without their permission. That's just immoral. It's no different than just sort of stealing. So that's wrong. I think how I'm curious, like especially somebody who runs a small studio with 34 people, it's like, what are the points of tedium that maybe AI could help out with that I don't want to do? And I'm not going to hire someone to do. I've a really dumb example. I'm making a bunch of images. I size them all incorrectly because I'm dumb and I'm not an artist. I did it all in Photoshop and I have like 2000 images that are the wrong size. I can have ChatGPT resize those and zip it in a file for me. And it literally takes it like a minute to do that.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “But it's mostly weird and shitty, and even like when trying to have AI answer for me, like, I don't normally make UI in a game. And so I'm trying to figure out like UMG and the Unreal Engine. And I'm asking ChatGPT to fix a simple problem. Like, how do I make the chat wrap? And it overconfidently gives me the wrong answer. And it's like write one in 10 times. Its hit rate has to be a lot better. I think there's a lot of moral concerns around AI when it comes to creative pursuits as well No one's creative work should ever be used by AI without their permission.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think with AI in mind in particular, I think the current state of AI trying to integrate it into development is mostly a hot mess. But I do think that games are a technology-driven art form. And somebody much smarter than me once described it, and I'm paraphrasing making games like making a movie if you had to invent the camera every time because you're kind of inventing the technology of your specific game. And I think AI can play a role in that and we'd be silly not to look at it as an option. The problem with AI right now is it's overconfident. In what it tries to deliver, like it fooled around, obviously, like everybody, you mess around with, you know, ChatGPT and Gemini and you fool around with some of the art generation. And it's fun for non-artists to fool around on mid-journey.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Zork was, I mean, Zork just brings me back to that old IBM PC with my mom and my brother trying to figure out, you know, like how to keep the lights on or else the grew's going to eat us, you know.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “They are highly skilled, highly passionate, highly knowledgeable. But yeah, it's an inspiration for me, that and EverQuest were defined. And the amount of hours I've logged in both those games are insane.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “We're not doing that. I just lost the entire Rust audience when I said we're not doing that. If you're a Rust player, you're not thinking you're going to lose everything you have. You're thinking, I'm going to take everything somebody else has.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I don't know yet, probably every month. We want it to be fast enough that you're not too attached, but we want to make it rewarding. Like the trick is coming up with not why am I upset that the world resets, but why am I excited that the world resets? And we know players can get very angry about resetting worlds Anybody who's played 5,000 hours of Rust, like some of us, the resetting world is the magic. It's, I can't wait for the next reset because The adventure starts all over again. And if you want to play the first time with me, like if we want to play World of Warcraft and I'm level 80 and you're level one, there's no meaningful experience we can have together. But in Russ, we just wait for a reset and we're both naked on the beach, you know, from minute one.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, but Rust and a lot of inspiration for me in the game I'm working on now, my game is not like Rust in that it's not a PvP-centric game, but it will have PvP”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “In Rush, you are considered a complete noob that doesn't know what he's doing if you don't have a thousand hours, even a thousand hours. People would be like, oh, you only have a thousand hours in that game.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, I don't give anyone a pass. I feel like a lot of gamers and game developers, like if it has writing, they're like, the story's so good. I'm like, actually very few games have great story, but Red Dead has a great story. It's got great character development. It's got a good plot. And the dialogue is like Tarantino level high quality dialogue. Red Dead's up there. I have my other games that make the list for me. And these are both these games are I would never tell you to play them. EverQuest and Rust are Two of the most defining games to me and my career and my life, and Rust I would never recommend somebody go and play it, Rust will come calling to you if you are up to play it.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “My son and I both played Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, and he makes games also. And we had this moment where he's like, I'm so sad after I played it. And he's like, I know I'll never make anything like this. And it's that weird, like, you honor it so much and think it's so great. Red Dead was like that for me. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game I put on a shrine. Not just how brilliant the game itself is, but as a game maker, as a craftsperson who makes games, how the hell do you make that? Like only rock star with all the years of making those types of games. No one else can come in entry level. Compete with that.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I kind of rationally or irrationally just worship it's just sort of if it's from Nintendo it's going to be great And even if my first impression is like, wow, they're doing what weird thing with the controller this time. And then you get your hands on it and you're like, God.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Every aspect is so thoughtful, so well designed. The art matches the design and the tech and even integrating with the switch in the way it does. How do you keep making Zelda better? How can Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time exist and somebody make an even better Zelda game? Way you can chop down a tree and float in a river and like the world is a toy and everything works as you wished and hoped it would work and there's a narrative aspect to it and there's really fun combat and action and itemization. There's so many things that that game gets right that other games are lucky if they get one of those things right and are become best in their genre just for getting that one thing right. And Breath of the Wild does them all right and the best.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So there's one that's the best. It's Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, and then there's this list of greatest games, Zork, Ultima.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And so I relate that to myself personally. That's how I feel in an aspirational way. I'm not saying I've achieved it, but in an aspirational way, I want to be that way. And I think it's also an analogy for the making of games. Like it's making of games is a constant pursuit of imperfection. Game is never going to be perfect. Just ask the players. They're very vocal about it. And seeing the beauty and the imperfections and the strength in something that's been broken that can be stronger.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “So, Kinsugi is a Japanese craft of repairing broken pottery. So there's a lot of philosophy that goes into it as well. And, you know, I want to do a good job of explaining it. But basically, you take a broken piece of pottery and then they would use golden joinery. Like golden lacquer to put the piece back together. And the thought was rather than hiding the scars, you make them more beautiful. And the philosophical parts that sort of appeal to me with that is there's a lot of me and Tim in that of We're so appreciative for our time at Blizzard, but we didn't come away unscarred. And there's also a philosophy in Kansugi that nothing's ever perfect, and the pursuit of perfection is actually a mistake, and that there's beauty and imperfect.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Part of the excitement too, you know, it's kind of like this is how the sausage gets made. I mean, you're going to see it front row.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yes, and this game has more rough edges, probably like the most rough edges we would have at Blizzard is showing you at BlizzCon, which was heavily polished and controlled. This is going to be more, you know, like in development than anything else I've ever worked on. I love it.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “No big corporate marketing group would ever think to do that in a million years without like some You know, $10 million announce or whatever. We'll just kind of put it on Steam and be cool if people wish listed it. There's my plug. And then I think we are shooting to have some sort of public-ish alpha in. March and then our plan, and something I'm really excited about because I've never gotten to do this before, we want to put the game in early access. Some people hate early access and won't touch it, and I understand it. And then some people are like, I want to be in on the ground floor and see the thing from day one and watch it evolve. So we'll put it into early access and we'll just run that until Knows”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So, this is the beauty of me and Tim kind of getting to run the show and why we're excited about it. We can kind of do whatever we want within reason.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “That's what we would have done at Blizzard. We're going to be a little different here. So the tone of this game, you know, Metsin would describe Blizzard as the hero factory. You know, we make, and what he means by that is not only are we making heroes, but we make the players into heroes. This game is going to have an edgier tone. You're going to enter this world. It's going to feel lonelier. It's going to feel mysterious, larger than you. You're going to feel small until you earn the right to feel big. It's going to feel really dangerous. You're going to want to see what's over that next hill, but if the sun is setting, like get to shelter. Can't wait to get back to my ranch and put my cozy fireplace on and wait till morning, you know. We want more of that vibe.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Respects to Blizzard in, I don't want to try to crib Blizzard and make a pseudo blizzard game. You know, this is, I want to make a Kinsugiama game. You know, me and Tim and this crack team, you know, we're only 34 people. We want to define what a Konsugiama game is. This world seemed so inspiring to us, you know, the setting is really interesting. I think California can be a game world. I think we can make it beautiful and interesting. We don't have to follow history or geography. We can kind of do a spin where, you know, it feels authentic. We can have guns that feel like they're kind of from that time period, but we're not spaceships and aliens and steampunk.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “This is really different. It's been hard for people when people were talking to us about, you know, they know me and Tim and, oh, the blizzard guy's overwatch guys. You're making like a bright aspirational future, team-based hero shooter, right? And I'm like, why would I want to do that? I felt like, first of all,”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “We're all blown away by how much impact just the lighting. And I'm not an artist, so I don't think about things like the color theory, the lights, the clouds, what all of that's bringing to this. I just know I want to live in that world. These are the types of worlds that we want to make.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Yeah, I want, I mean, when I see that painting, this is what video games brings to the table. So every art form that evolves after another gets to incorporate previous art forms. Movies got to take sound and, you know, fine art. We get to take everything, including movies. So, you know, it's Catamari Damasi, the art form. But, like, I see a beardstat painting and I want to walk around that world. I want to see what's around the corner. And our lighting artist, Mike, he sees these pictures and he's like, okay, yeah, hold my beer. Like, I'll make it look like that. And he...”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “We have a great lighting artist who is an amazing guy named Mike Mara and some of the inspiration for the game. Like there's a lot of inspirations for this game, but there's a painter named Albert Beardstadt who I discovered while researching California. Epic landscape pieces of Yosemite and a lot of other gorgeous parts of”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Any server that you join will have a different seed in terms of how the tiers play out. So Mojave might be the easiest newbie area on your server, but on my server it's endgame tier four area. But all of our notable points of interest also move around. So we have a really amazing point of interest that we call Dread Rock that's inspired by Alcatraz. And like, sure, sometimes it's in San Francisco, but sometimes it can be sitting in the middle of the Mojave Desert also.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Yeah, as a world we handcrafted the world, so like the shape of California is always the familiar shape of California, except it's an island. So, you know, there's no Nevada on the eastern side. We handcrafted all of that. It looks gorgeous. And places like Yosemite are where you would expect Yosemite to be. And so all of those familiar landmarks are there. But then we have like dozens of points of interest. And those move around the map depending on the map seed. And the map is also tiered in terms of difficulty. We don't really have levels in this game. We have tiers and there's only four tiers right now. Maybe that will change. But the way that the map tears itself each time changes with every world seed. So not only”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “The theme of the game is very weird. We're not trying to make a historical game. There's no historical accuracy to this. In fact, the island, when first discovered, is uninhabited. That's already not true, as we know. There were lots of people in California. It's an island, which we know is not true. We want it to feel authentic to that time period because we think that time period is cool. Prospectors, you know, cowboys, like it's a really fun thing for us to explore all of those themes people in minds we want to build minds and We just want to create a world that you can live in. I love creating worlds, everything that I've worked on before from World of Warcraft to Overwatch. It's always been how do you create this place for players to escape to?”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Shirt, the most unconventional way to talk about this stuff for the first time. So our company name is Kinsugiama, which most people will struggle to pronounce. And the company name has a deep meaning to me, which I'm happy to explain later if you're interested. And the game name that we're working on. It's called the Legend of California. And it's an open world game. People are going to call it a survival crafting game. People like to compartmentalize these. I think it's an action game. It's a game that takes place on a mythical island of California.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Which was a very good position to sort of be at to start a company. So what Tim and I did was say, we're not doing this for money, but here's the game we want to make, and it's going to take this many developers, and we think it's going to take this length of time, and that means the budget is this. And we need for any of these people who want to invest in us, we got to hit that number. But after that, we're not going to go for more money. It's not an auction to raise as high as we can go. We're going to optimize for control.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “I needed for none of that to happen. I just needed to be able to mourn the loss of Blizzard and create on my own. So it was great. And at that time, like as soon as it was announced that I was leaving Blizzard, I had like 60 people reach out to me. This was April of 2021 and investment money was nuts, both like the VC money. The strategic money was crazy, like especially the Chinese companies because apparently they weren't getting publishing numbers in China or something. The whole economy was crazy. And so just everybody was trying to throw money at me.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Yeah, I I needed to be away from the world. I needed to not have, I wanted to not get attention from anyone. I needed to not read my name on Reddit or any internet site. I wanted to not come up, let some other Jeff Kaplan bubble that top of the Google, you know. Search l”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “And my exit interviews at like one o'clock, I'm going to be over to your house at like two o'clock that afternoon. And I'm like, well, don't you think you should take some time off, Tim, you know, before whatever's next for you? Take a month off, you know, Meg, his wife will appreciate it, you know, just go pull weeds in the garden for a while. And he's like, I'm a programmer. All I'm going to do is program for a month if I take a month off. I might as well start programming our game, which. It was so awesome when he said that Came over and I pitched him this idea for a game and I pitched him let's start a company and that was it like that was the birth of us making a studio”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Programming design audio of the games industry. I'm not interested in the games industry. I'm not interested in the business of games. I'm not interested in the entertainment industry. It's just game jamming, making stuff that we're going to play together And around that time I call on my development soulmate. There's a programmer named Tim Ford. He reached out and he's like, Hey man, he was like associate tech director at the time. And he's like, yeah, I don't think I can do this anymore. It's just not like it was I just handed in my notice. I'm like, whoa, you know, well, if you want to do something together, like, fuck it, let's take a stab and, you know, just see what happens. And Tim came over to my house and, well, before that, he says, my last day is on Friday.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “And I was designing, I was going online, I was watching YouTube videos to learn Unreal and Adobe Illustrator and all these things to like help me make games, whatever, Blender. I had no right to be doing any of that. And it just felt so amazing to do it. And I sort of realized I came to two realizations. Never want to work for someone else again. I never want to. Create something and then have somebody take my baby away from me. You know, that's really hard when that happens. And it's sort of happened a few times now, you know, where you have to just let something go that you created. And I wanted it all to be focused on the craft of making games.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “And, you know, there'd be moments where it's like, okay, I want to do like a game world map. Like, hey, Aaron, you're amazing at making Game World maps. Like you do that. And I need some story hooks. Hey, Chris, what do you think would be cool here? You know, so collaborative, and I was surrounded by the best of the best, and there I was by myself. And I was out there again, and I loved it. It brought all the joy of game making. I thought games were no longer fun to make because it was only about business and somebody's asking me for unreasonable amounts of money and unreasonable amounts of time. And I had forgotten the pure joy of the craft of making games.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Yeah, well, she won't let me garden in the garden because that's hers, but I'm allowed to pull the weeds. So I got very good at that. I was very proficient. And then of all things I cracked out on Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War and I unlocked Dark Matter Ultra, which that's like a crazy achievement to do in that game. So I did that. And then I just, I couldn't help it. Like it's how I'm programmed. It was like at this point it's late spring, early summer, and I'm just sitting in the backyard. I just started writing with Notepad about. Here's a game I want to make. And it was so terrifying because. For 19 years, I had worked with the greatest developers, I thought, in the industry.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Not so well. My wife, who is wonderful, told me I needed to take at least a year off and just, you know, I've been going really hard. I'd gone nineteen years, barely taken vacation. And I let Blizzard consume me. And, you know, I was crushed by leaving because I loved the place. I didn't know what to do with myself. I was pulling weeds in the backyard.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “They're crushing it. And I think Diablo 4 in like modern times is one of the best worlds that have built. And they know, they understand Diablo players. That community is so hard and so demanding. And that team is amazing.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Like two weeks later, I'm walking through the hall and I see a bunch of level designers and artists. They're all like crowded around the screen. And on the screen, they've dragged BlackRock Mountain and Karazon and the Stormwind Cathedral. I'm like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And they're like, well, Chris said that the Silver Moon Tower had to be the tallest thing in World of Warcraft. And so we're measuring how tall all of these other things are so we can make the tower taller. And I'm like, guys. Chris doesn't know how tall the burning steps, you know, and the cathedral and storm wind is what Chris means is just make the tower really fucking tall. You don't need to measure it. And oh, okay, that's okay. Like, are you willing to take the heed if he? I'm like, I'm willing to take the heat on this one, guys.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “My job, as I saw it working with Chris, was I had to, on World of Warcraft specifically working with Chris, is I was like the translator into gameplay of what Chris wanted, how to get it to play like how Chris wanted. So my favorite stories were working on Burning Crusade and we're in this meeting. And Chris is like, he's the gentlest, sweetest guy, but because he carries himself with such confidence and everybody's in awe of him, the junior developers get kind of intimidated by him. So we're in this meeting and we're talking about Silver Moon City because we're introducing the Blood Elves. And Chris is like, and Silver Moon City, it's got the tallest fucking tower in all of Azeroth. I mean, it is the tallest thing, you know, it's mind-blowing the awe of it, only the blood elves could build it.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Like, okay, in that first meeting, Chris had put a zone called Grizzly Hills on the board. Well, I don't know anything about Grizzly Hills Hey Chris, talk about grizzly hills. If you didn't interrupt him, he'd just go for an hour and you have no idea how much of it like he had pre-thought about or had existed in previous lore. And how much of it he was just making up on the spot. He's just that charismatic and captivating.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “And all of it, he would just go on for an hour. And then I would sort of digest. I just listen, taking constant notes, I'm photographing his whiteboards all the time. And then I go back and start to put those into design flow of like, okay, what's a zone? What's a dungeon? What could be cool? What should come first? What should come last? You know, Lich King, for example, we wanted to try a very specific design to counter a problem we had in Burning Crusade, which is everybody entered through the dark portal, through Hellfire Peninsula, all the server programmers hate you because everybody loads into the same zone at the same time. Lich King, we split them up for better player flow. Plus, it's more interesting. The more choice you have. Sid Meyer says games are a series of interesting choices. So we give them two starting zones, but that was the flow with Chris. And so often we would just”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “They were the best. Like, you could walk into a room. The way I would work with Chris is early on when I was more junior, it was just sort of getting creative direction from him. Hey, Chris, I'm about to work on this zone called Westfall. What are your ideas? You know, how could I capture them in gameplay? Well, that won't quite work. How about like this? It was more like that. Later on, I still remember. The first discussion I ever had with Chris about Rathlech King. I went up to his office like, hey, we're finally doing it. We're doing the Northrind expansion. You know, what excites you about Northrind? And that's all you had to say. And he would draw a map, and he'd start pulling up old Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 1 manuals and, you know, showing you pictures he and Sammy had drawn and like maps.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “That love of the games and the respect and good treatment for game developers really turned it into the place that it was, just the commitment to excellence, the high quality bar, and then finding these passionate people like Chris Metzen or Sam Didier, they were like the visionaries of early blizzard, Alan Adham, of just these worlds that were still making and we're still playing in today. It was infectious and it was inspirational and you wore the blizzard blue with an esprit decor like you felt proud to be part of it and you felt like you had made it to be there and everything you did you did wanting to respect and honor those who had come before you. I know it sounds almost cheesy saying it that way, but it really had that sense of reverence. Like you knew you were part of something special. You didn't take it for granted.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source